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herzeleid, Microsoft's fundamental lock-in strategy is requiring customers to purchase, er excuse me, license entire stacks of crap even for the simplest functionality. You can't just have a desktop Windows, no, it gets stuffed with all kinds of useless junk like .Net and adware, so if you want to actually do anything you have to shell out mass money for productivity software and anti-malware crud. If you want your desktop Windows to join a Windows domain you have to purchase a more-expensive less-crippled version of Windows to do this.

On the server side it's a hundred times worse. Want a simple POP server? Lotsa luck-- you'll have to dig deeply to find a decent one by a different vendor; MS wants you to buy into Exchange. Which won't run without Active Directory. Which these days wants you to have SharePoint very muchly, which wants SQL Server, and everything in the entire freaking MS software stack requires IE and ActiveX and IIS, and so on and on...

So the short story is all cracks in the wall are good. Which the article didn't say, but it should have :)

@tc - but rather than spending colossal amounts of effort to improve the quality of life for microsoft customers, why not put the effort into making linux even better, and so make the linux alternative even more attractive?

Quoting:How does "running on top of microsoft windows" equate to "challenging microsoft"?

If you paid attention in the past, you know Microsoft is not about an OS, strategically speaking they don't care about their OS that much. Read their 'power evangelism' sheets if you don't believe me. It's about platforms like .NET, Silverlight etc. It's those platforms that lock developers into Windows; not the other way around; Windows users can choose PHP, Python etc. as well and are not bound to .NET, which means Windows doesn't attract users to use more Microsoft products, but platforms do.
According to the same power-evangelism sheets by Microsoft, developers don't switch platform after they learned one, which they refer to as 'platform-lockin'.
Therefore, and most people don't get this - following this MS-logic KDE is much a greater threat to Microsoft than Linux. This is because Microsoft cares about platforms to create platform-lockin of which OS-lockin is a consequence. Since Mono/Moonlight came, Microsoft couldn't care less about Linux because both Mono and Moonlight consolidate the .NET platform lock-in. Moreover, Microsoft can even point to them if the EC asks about their dominant market (share) position. Windows will always have better support for Microsoft platforms and therefore Microsoft will continue to sell OSes as long as they have a dominant position in the platform market.

Quoting:but rather than spending colossal amounts of effort to improve the quality of life for microsoft customers, why not put the effort into making linux even better

Simple math I suggest.
More hobbyist app-developers use Windows than Linux. It's a way to attract current Windows-developers to the KDE-platform, and after that it's easy to port their apps to Linux. Those Windows-apps devs keep continuing making crap freeware for Windows without KDE on Windows; and this might be a way for them to learn there's something else than .NET.

Quoting:More hobbyist app-developers use Windows than Linux. It's a way to attract current Windows-developers to the KDE-platform, and after that it's easy to port their apps to Linux.

I don't think accepting the status quo is a viable long term strategy. Just because microsoft has had a virtual desktop monopoly for some time doesn't mean I want to help perpetuate that sad state of affairs.

I for one am quite skeptical of the claims that devoting resources to making life better for microsoft cutomers brings more users to linux. In fact, I see just the opposite happening. We're beginning to see a new type of microsoft troll in the newsgroups - they bad mouth linux, and say things like "why do you need linux? you can run open source on windows, why should I switch?" Instead of being grateful to the FOSS developers for making their life better, they rub their faces in the fact that they are using ms windows, and boldly claim that "open source works better on windows", complete with lots of FUD about how they have to compile everything on linux, whereas with windows they install open source software with a mouse click. Never mind that the reality is starkly different to that, their words get repeated, and beleived by many.

IMHO this whole FOSS+mswindows lockin is fubar. Certainly, developers are free to work on whatever they want, but if the result of all this FOSS bridge building, at the end of the day, is that only microsoft is left standing, I'd call that a failure.

I started out using FF .7 or .8 on Windows and look where I ended up? How can having KDE on Windows not expose at least one Developer, not to mention a ton of users, to FOSS and GNU/Linux? And maybe, maybe get one to try it out and possibly switch?

I was already using Windows and not until after I had heard of Linux and actually tried it out, did I start to realize just how bad Windows sucked.

I, being 'old school' enough to say I had Fedora Core 1 on disk and had to use a book to walk me through installing it because I couldn't even figure out how to burn a bootable disk with WMP.

Now that I think about it, I don't think I ever figured that out..WMP sucks anyway.

Well, I was trying to install KTorrent for my sister (all Windows torrent clients I know are crap), but it didn't work that well under Windows. If she had whole KDE - and you already almost have if you want to use some KDE prog for Win - it probably would have worked.

Quoting:I for one am quite skeptical of the claims that devoting resources to making life better for microsoft cutomers

Yes, you are skeptical I see. I'd say these resources are devoted to making life better for 'computer users' instead of Microsoft customers. By labelling them as Microsoft customers - which most of those computer users are, that's a fact, it sounds like G. Bush; you're either fully Microsoft customer or not at all. So it might help to see those Microsoft-customers for what they are: Computer users struggling to get their work done; and KDE might help a tiny bit. Nonetheless, of course I understand this sentiment.

Quoting:they bad mouth linux, and say things like "why do you need linux? you can run open source on windows, why should I switch?"

Well, indeed, why should they switch? If they are happily using open source or better: Free Software on a Windows kernel, they are almost independent of Microsoft and proprietary software. Assuming there are two persons, the one saying they don't need Linux because open source works on Windows as well, and the other one saying they don't need to pay for Windows because all their programs work on Linux / BSD as well and they only use 10% of Windows while paying for 100%, in a working market economy (with choice of OS for new systems), to who of those two would they listen? Agreed, the first group will be the most vocal, so it might be hard. It is nowadays as well.

According to the argumentation it is a bad idea to port open platforms to Windows, it was also a bad idea to make Apache, PHP and Python available to Windows. If those two wouldn't have been available for Windows on the other hand, I am sure the whole world was dependent of .NET and therefore of Microsoft and its WIndows.
If that was the case, Linux, Apple and BSD users would have been forced to use Mono / Moolight as well; while nowadays it's quite possible to circumvent those platforms.
So I think it already has been proven it is a good thing to make open platforms available for Windows as well.

I understand the problems of persons bad-mouthing Linux, but those would exist too if KDE, Python etc. didn't run on Windows; they'd also say 'In Linux you have to compile the source' etc; so I don't see much difference.
You and a lot of people assume most people will use Linux if KDE (and Python etc. for that matter) only runs on Linux, because they are forced to do so. I assume if KDE only runs on Linux most people will neither use KDE nor Linux.

Anyway, time will tell.

Quoting:How in the world is some noob, who has come to hate their Windows experience, going to install KDE?

The usual ways. Articles on mainstream - comp. sites is one of the most important ways. One day we'll see KDE added to some of the fancy CD's bundled with computer magazines I assume. That's the way I learned about Open Office also. Some governments and companies might start using it because of their open source plans as well. It will enable a more modular gradual switching path to Linux as well; something entities migrating could use I understand from cases like Munich et all. Finally, it might add some pressure on Microsoft to make Windows more modular; if they have to provide versions without IE / WMP, then why not versions without the Windows Desktop manager? If they are lucky they will be able to ship the N version for the same price, though it will be obvious selling Windows N without desktop manager, IE and WMP for the same price as the version which includes it is abuse of a dominant market position.

Quoting:they bad mouth linux, and say things like "why do you need linux? you can run open source on windows, why should I switch?"

If they are using OSS because they like the premise behind it, then they should switch to an OSS OS as well. If they are using the OSS because it is better than the proprietary software they should try an OSS OS. If they are using the OSS because it is free without the added malware then they should look at an OSS OS because you don't have to deal with the malware.

So I guess for any reason that they are using other OSS is a reason to use linux, without even getting into the technical advantages that linux has over windows.

Quoting:Well, I was trying to install KTorrent for my sister (all Windows torrent clients I know are crap), but it didn't work that well under Windows.

But she would never have even tried to install KTorrent. So I repeat my question,

Quoting:Why would anyone wedded to the Windows Desktop install KDE?

as you are obviously not wedded to the Windows desktop.

Quoting:The usual ways. Articles on mainstream - comp. sites is one of the most important ways. One day we'll see KDE added to some of the fancy CD's bundled with computer magazines I assume. That's the way I learned about Open Office also.

Does your sister read these articles, access these CDs, and if so, would she do so if you weren't there already doing so?

I repeat my question.?

Quoting:How in the world is some noob, who has come to hate their Windows experience, going to install KDE?

We're talking about the type of person who thinks thier computer is broken because the home page on their browser goes to a different website than they are used to.

Quoting:Indeed, given that most noobs I come across don't search the net for answers to such questions, where are they going to hear about the possibility?

Most of the people I've set up Linux for never searched the web for answers to problems they had with their Windows computer, instead relying on Chinese whispers for the answer. They also don't, inspite of all my prompting search the web for answers to Linux problems. part of the reason for that is

Quoting:And why in the world would such a person ask the question?

They don't know how to frame the question. A computer is, to most people Magic, in fact, most technology is, to most people, Magic. I can explain to these people, I can show these people, I can walk them through these sorts of things, but they insist on rote learning - that incidentally is how they got to where they are now - and keep telling me I'm so smart and they are so dumb, and I can tell them until I'm blue in the face that they are just as smart as me, but it doesn't work, they want to believe.........../END RANT

The people who will install KDE4 on Windows are those who are already prepared to try Linux and or any other different technology.

Quoting:We're talking about the type of person who thinks thier computer is broken because the home page on their browser goes to a different website than they are used to.

Those people don't know *anything*. They are going to learn about KDE from their geek neighbour/friend who does read the mainstream articles and looks at the bundled CDs.

The hard part isn't the computer illiterate but the people who know enough about Windows to get by. They are deatlhy afraid that the years of work it took to gain their little bit of knowledge is going to be obsolete when they move somewhere else.

- Because I can talk my brother trough a complete configuration of kopete on the phone,
but was not able to do this for this certain proprietary IM client recently,
without resorting to 'look for something that reads like "account settings" '.
I can see a lot of people on Windows who rely on me being available in the middle
of the night for their technical problems preferring applications I'm comfortable in
(I can be quite unsocial at 2am in the morning, especially if I have to wrestle remotely with
programs like msn).

- Because krita is imho a better alternative to pirating photoshop than using gimp
for most folks (I have no problems with gimp, but my neighbor has, at least
with its interface, and he runs win xp)

- Because I have yet to find something comparable to okular for Windows

- Because contrary to popular belief, even noobs like to install software they
stumble upon randomly on the intertubes, at least if my monthly mal-, crap-
and nagware deinstallation runs at other peoples computers are anything to go by

- Because from time to time I have to use my WinXP computer at work (at least when
I try to verify that those Qt programs I develop will work on my bosses Laptop as expected)
and would really like to have my preferred set of applications at my disposal (kate,
digikam, okular, oketa, konsole, hopefully one day k3b etc.).

- I know of at least one teacher that plans to use step (the KDE - Edu physics simulator)
starting next autumn for the physics classes he gives.
There are close-to-zero chances to introduce FOSS programs in education
if pupils are *forced* to run anything other than MS Windows.
Sad state of affairs (and pretty ironic too, given that at the same time it is no problem
to force the use of proprietary and costly operating systems and office suites)
and easily to overcome with a Live CD, I know, but try to get that
past non-technical parents. or not so technical interested other teaches.

- I have some hopes for the not-so-far-future for Akonadi / OpenChange
et al. . Having the ability to natively communicate (and share contacts/calenders)
with coworkers without having to use Exchange is definitely something I look
forward to.

Besides this highly subjective reasons for justifying the porting of FOSS applications
to closed source operating systems (and for the sake of completeness, one should
include Mac OSX in this category too, even if Darwin is not properitary), there are
other aspects of this worth mentioning

- Without belittling the effort of folks of the "KDE on Windows" (and for that matter,
the "KDE on Mac OSX", the "KDE on Solaris", the "XYZ on my toaster" etc. efforts):

The work to port this applications to alternative platforms is managable, mostly due
to the fact that Qt itself is cross plattform. Furthermore, as a rule of thumb,
the more architectures (both hardware and software) are targeted during
development of applications, the easier it is in general to port the result to one more platform
(e.g. business logic already separated from platform specific implementations, layers like
solid and phonon taking the burden of dealing with low level abstractions in each application
from the the app developer, etc. )

Reports (and screencasts) of complex, foreign things like plasma running ontop of
Windows are testament to the fact, that treating cross-plattform development not as
an afterthought can yield pretty nice results even with limited man-power.

- It makes sense for FOSS projects to tap into the human resources of closed source
operating systems. There are developers running Windows, Mac OSX etc. that contribute
to amarok2 and koffice code, that is perfectly working on *nix platforms like Linux and the
BSDs as well. Are we really in a position to neglect this contributions because of their
choosen development platform? Even the FSF apparently thinks that providing software
under the GNU umbrella for Windows is nothing to sneer at.

And why is KDE singled out in this regard? (It is the topic of this article, ok, got that, but
when KDE4 was announced to target Win and Mac OSX platforms as well, the level
of criticism was pretty high as well). Gedit was recently reported to being ported
to Windows, inkscape and gimp run on Windows for ages now (I would not be able
to write my documentations without having inkscape available on Win32), and
just yesterday somebody posted on planet.gnome that it would be nice if evince would
be available for Windows and MacOSX too.

Those folks I was talking about at least *feel* that they are wedded to the desktop.
Me being their prime source of tech support recommending the applications I

a.) believe work reasonably well for them
b.) am most comfortable and knowledgeable in

is a pretty big motivation for installing KDE nevertheless. There is quite a number
of GIMP on Windows users who would probably use a pirated version of
Photoshop instead, if it were not that I refuse to support computers with
pirated software on it.

I actually do work with people who are wedded to the Windows desktop, they think Windows Vista is the best thing since sliced bread. There is no way in the world any of them would even contemplate for a moment installing KDE4 on their Windows OS, and here I'm talking about people actually capable of doing so, not some noob, or general run of the mill user.

The "Vista is everything I need" user is one category of users.
And I agree that these users are probably not the prime target group.

But there is the "I will use whatever comes preinstalled with my computer" user, the "I will
user whatever it is my geek friend installs for me" users, the "If it looks good, I will install it
and if I can't get rid of it will reinstall the whole freaking OS", the "There is this application
my teacher uses for the classes, and I need it for my homework" student too,
the "all my peers use this app, i will use it too therefore" group, etc.

Why should we (=FOSS developers) stop porting applications to "alternative alternative"
OSes just because there is a (probably large?) segment of users of these systems
that will not appreciate the work? This is a serious question, btw.

Users have started to install Firefox without being forced to.
Because it was considered to be cool, l337, whatever.
Because it was reported to run better than IE.
Because sometimes even noobs are biten by the experiment-with-your-computer bug.

There are still users who swear that IE is the end all of internet browsers.
Some of them would be hard pressed to explain what a browser is, no doubt.
It may even be that the majority of users prefers not to fiddle with installing
an alternative.

Of course these people I'm talking a bout have the most powerful computer they can afford, with the fasted CPU and the Maximum RAM and the most powerful Graphics card. On the other hand, another bloke, who was given a much less powerful machine with Vista on it turned all the fancy visuals off, setting the desktop graphics back to something similar to Windows 98 (which is what I've done on the WindXP machine I have to use, and for the same reason), just to get some performance out of the machine.

My poor work computer too, runs XP pro with 512 meg ram, and then we are forced to use Lotus Notes. With the wee beastie being under configuration control there isn't a thing I can do to help it, expect only check my email twice a week. Ticks my boss off something fierce that I only look at email on monday and friday, and more often than not just friday.

The Win XP machine I use has 4 gig of RAM a 4 core 2.6 gig CPU. I program on it, and have lots of software like Visual Studio, SQL Server several iterations of Firefox and other browsers, the GIMP (we do use that bit of FOSS) oftern Remote desktop and various other applications. To get useful performance out of it I go to the Control Panel -> System -> Advanced -> Performance - Visual Effects and select Adjust for best performance. This turns all the fancy Win XP dektop skins off, and leaves me with a Win98 style desktop. My Linux laptop with 3gig of RAM a 2 core CPU at 1.73 Gig still performs better with a similar application load, that may also include a VM running Win XP with 1 Gig of RAM assigned to the VM.